An interesting coming together of art and science. The interview with the artists on the BBC’s Culture Show is also highly recommended: it’s an excellent STS case study in itself. Apparently many scientists took this for a recording of an experiment, as it looks so convincing. Fact or fiction? You decide…
Update: We had to remove the embedded video as some of the browsers couldn’t handle it. You can watch Magnetic Movie here instead.
A very interesting call for papers started making the rounds yesterday on various blogs and mailing lists, emanating from the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy (CPPE) at the University of Leicester. “The State of Things: Towards a Political Economy of Artifice and Artefacts” conference is to take place between 29 April and 1 May 2009 at Leicester. It brings together the concerns of modern and classical forms of political economy regarding the nature of the capitalist mode of production with recent object-orientated inquiries into economic ordering that draw on actor-network theory, especially within economic sociology and science and technology studies. The deadline for proposals is 28 November 2008. The full call for papers is reproduced below.
Update [18 July 2008]: A nice PDF flyer is now also available.
A thought-provoking gathering took place yesterday (25 June 2008) at Oxford University, organised by the STS group at the James Martin Institute. “Is there a turn to ontology under way in Science and Technology Studies?” - asked the provocation piece written by Steve Woolgar and colleagues. Ted Schatzki, Mike Lynch, Noortje Marres, and Arie Rip laid out their thoughts in response, each presentation accompanied by the comments of two discussants. The papers and the comments can be downloaded from the Saïd Business School website. There are also additional comments by Annemarie Mol and John Law.
The draft programme for the 2008 4S/EASST Conference in Rotterdam is now available from the 4S website [1MB PDF]. There are just too many interesting talks here for us to be able to even begin to list them, so we will stick with highlighting just the one session that is most closely in line with the ANTHEM theme: Session 1.3.16 “Actor Network Theory meets (Post)Phenomenology,” between 13:30-15:30 on 21 August 2008 in Room T3-31. Session organisers: Jack Post and Peter-Paul Verbeek. The talks:
The 2nd Triangular Post-Graduate Conference, “Challenges for contemporary research on technology and organisation,” will take place on 4-6 June 2008 at UCD Business School. The conference is jointly organised by Lancaster University, University of Cambridge and University College Dublin, and is chaired by Séamas Kelly, Lucas Introna, and Matthew Jones. The call for papers invites doctoral students from information systems and organisational studies to present preliminary research findings and/or challenging theoretical and methodological issues concerning their research. (more…)
The 4th Social Study of IT Open Research Forum (SSIT-ORF) will take place on 23 and 24 April 2008 at the Information Systems and Innovation Group (ISIG) at the LSE. At ISIG there is a long tradition of research interest in both actor-network theory and Heidegger, as approaches to the study of technology. This event may be of particular interest to PhD students and junior researchers who would like to discuss their research with other PhD students and leading IS academics in this area. The deadline for registration has been extended to 30 March 2008. Register here.
Click here to listen to (3 hours 24 minutes) or download (94.4MB) the recording of the symposium “The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics” at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 5 February 2008. Speakers are Bruno Latour and Graham Harman. The panelists are Lucas Introna and Noortje Marres. The event is introduced by Leslie Willcocks and chaired by Edgar Whitley. There are also audience questions and comments. This event was organised by members of the ANTHEM Group and hosted by the Information Systems and Innovation Group (ISIG) of the Department of Management, LSE.
Click here to listen to (1 hour 23 minutes) or download (19.7MB) the recording of Bruno Latour’s lecture “Another European Tradition: traceability of the social and the vindication of Gabriel Tarde” at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 4 February 2008. The event was introduced and chaired by Nikolas Rose.
Click here to listen to (1 hour 33 minutes) or download (43.2MB) the recording of Noortje Marres’s talk “Devising Affectedness: Eco-Homes and the Making of Material Publics” delivered at the Information Systems Research Forum at ISIG, LSE on 24 January 2008. The slides and a video recording of the talk are available on the ISRF page.
On Thursday 24 January 2008 from 12:00 to 13:30 Noortje Marres will be giving an ISRF talk at ISIG at the London School of Economics and Political Science entitled “Devising Affectedness: Eco-Homes and the Making of Material Publics.” (more…)